My focus groups this month took place in Ilford, Guildford, Bolton and Altrincham, with regular Labour voters, and Conservative switchers to the Lib Dems, Reform and Labour. We talked about the Budget, crime, prisoners, the Tory alternative and the BBC.
Hatfield is different. Unlike too many of our prisons, around 85 per cent of ex-offenders, remaining in their jobs after release, with the support of a charity it is a place where they can genuinely begin to rebuild their life, given the right incentives and the right support.
My biggest concern over all of this is that it proves to be a distraction from a bigger issue – strengthening the capacity of the probation service, whose workload is about to increase hugely.
She says: “You have got a paper based system [in prisons] that belongs and was constructed in the 1980s, and causes confusion.”
“He [Lammy] certainly did not answer the questions and was not transparent, so under the ministerial code there is a question,” he says.
A simple proposal would be this: Offer all criminals a reduced or no sentence in exchange for their full castration with a cash payment on top. This should reduce criminal genes in future people, thus, significantly reducing down long-term criminality.
He insists “it’s about time the Government got serious about stopping illegal immigration”.
Our deputy editor joins TalkTV’s Ian Collins to discuss crime, the resident doctors’ strike, and the death of Hulk Hogan.
This is not about proposing Big Society 2.0. But the challenge of Broken Britain will not be solved by another national strategy or a new Whitehall taskforce.
In case after case, we see offenders with 50, 80, 100 or more convictions receiving tiny prison sentences, or even simply walking free without jail time.
Confronted with a choice between cutting the least-defensible welfare spending or letting the entire rest of the state fall to pieces, it turns out Labour aren’t that different from us.
Conservative Party Leader Kemi Badenoch and Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick visit HMP Wandsworth to expose Labour’s soft-on-crime agenda.
Our deputy editor explores an absurd angle of the cell shortage with TalkTV’s Alex Phillips.
The Shadow Justice Secretary has certainly won the hearts of the membership in our league table – but to what extent is that simply an artefact of not being in charge?
If the state can lavish record sums on welfare yet starve the justice system of funds, it is no wonder the foundations of law and order are crumbling.